Book excerpt: “One of the best and truest books about baseball, and about coming to maturity in America.” —Time In the late 1950s, acclaimed sportswriter Pat Jordan was a young pitching phenom, blowing away opposing batters for his Fairfield, Connecticut, high school baseball team. Fifteen major league clubs offered him a contract, but it was the Milwaukee Braves who won out, signing Jordan to a $45,000 bonus—one of the largest paid to any new player by the organization—and shipping him off to McCook, Nebraska, to play for their Class D ball club. It did not take long, however, for Jordan to realize he was out of his depth in professional baseball’s backwoods. He battled with inconsistency and a lack of control for three dismal seasons in such far-flung locales as Keokuk, Iowa, and Palatka, Florida, before the Braves released him and he gave up his dreams of big league greatness. Declared “unforgettable” by the Los Angeles Times and “a major triumph” by the Philadelphia Inquirer, A False Spring is a powerful and deeply affecting memoir about the gift of athletic talent and the heartbreak of unfulfilled promise.